Gail Alexan­der

A Venezue­lan na­tion­al, who was freed un­der a judg­ment of Jus­tice Her­bert Vol­ney, as he then was, is now back in prison and is "talk­ing about what hap­pened and why he got off," PNM Works Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said yes­ter­day. Im­bert and sev­er­al oth­er PNM Min­is­ters–in­clud­ing St Joseph MP Kennedy Swarats­ingh–weighed in on is­sues in­volv­ing UNC St Joseph can­di­date Vol­ney dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's. They ad­dressed the is­sue about Mon­day night's UNC meet­ing where mem­bers of the Ja­son John­son fam­i­ly protest­ed Vol­ney's judg­ment which freed Brad Boyce who was ac­cused of the manslaugh­ter of John­son.

Im­bert said he re­ject­ed Vol­ney's sub­se­quent apol­o­gy to the fam­i­ly since Vol­ney had al­leged­ly called pro­test­ers at the St Joseph meet­ing "Cepep work­ers who were paid to protest." Im­bert claimed it was on­ly when the UNC lead­er­ship saw the "ex­treme dam­age" caused by Vol­ney's "in­tem­per­ate and un­couth" be­hav­iour as "de­scrib­ing the moth­er and broth­er" of the vic­tim as Cepep work­ers, did he apol­o­gise. He said: "He in­sult­ed them and in­sult­ed Cepep work­ers as well in the usu­al style of the UNC... not re­al­is­ing they were mem­bers of the fam­i­ly that suf­fered be­cause of his bad de­ci­sion in the Boyce/John­son case." Im­bert said there was the case of Gomes ver­sus Gomez in which Vol­ney's de­ci­sion was over­ruled by the Privy Coun­cil.

He said Gomes was a T&T na­tion­al and Gomez, a Venezue­lan, who were charged with traf­fick­ing $13 mil­lion worth of co­caine. Im­bert said Vol­ney set them free "for some rea­son." Gov­ern­ment took the case to the Privy Coun­cil which over­turned Vol­ney's de­ci­sion to set them free. Gomes was ex­tra­dit­ed to T&T and is now in the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty prison, Im­bert said. Im­bert said: "I can as­sure you he's now talk­ing about what hap­pened and why he got off, why did he let them off and what did the Privy Coun­cil have to say about that."